At Toy Fair in New York City this week, Quantum Mechanix were showing off their latest and upcoming Star Trek products, including badges, pins, figures and a ship. Check out the latest Trek highlights from QMx.

New Trek badges

QMx is expanding its line of magnetic Star Trek: Discovery badge replicas, revealing three new ones at Toy Fair. The first two are due in April, starting with a fourth year cadet badge as worn by Sylvia Tilly in the first season. It will retail for $14.95.

QMx Discovery cadet badge replica

Also coming in April and retailing for $14.95 is a replica of one of those mysterious black badges seen in the third episode of Discovery, and not seen since. We have been wondering what is up with those badges since then, but the name given by QMx, “Magnetic Black Badge,” was no help.

QMx Discovery black badge replica

QMx’s final Star Trek: Discovery item was a magnetic Klingon emblem badge, arriving in May and retailing for $14.95.

QMx Discovery Klingon badge

QMx were also showing off their Star Trek: The Next Generation Mirror Universe insignia badge, as seen in the recent IDW comic book series. This badge was just made available and you can buy one now at Entertainment Earth.

QMx TNG Mirror badge

Upcoming Trek 1:6 figures

Quantum Mechanix is also continuing to expand its line of 1:6 scale articulated figures. While they weren’t committing to any specific dates, they were showing off a number of prototypes they are developing.

QMx TOS Scotty figure

QMx TOS Sulu figure

QMx Wrath of Khan Khan figure

QMx Wrath of Khan Admiral Kirk figure

QMx Wrath of Khan Captain Spock figure

March Mission Crate items

QMx were also showing off a couple of the items they have inside the March “Star Trek Mission Crate” from LootCrate. Among the various Trek items in the next Mission Crate will be a QMx 6-inch Master Series Locutus figure from Star Trek: The Next Generation, as well as a USS Enterprise-D ship.

Planet Express Ship

If you’re a fan of Star Trek there is a good chance you are also a fan of Futurama. If you are, there was another item QMx was showing off at Toy Fair that you may be interested in. They were showing off a prototype of a Planet Express ship model, planned for the second or third quarter of 2018, which will be priced at $59.95.

Wow, first time I’ve seen that new mirror universe insignia. It amazes me that something as simple and direct and ‘right’ as the original design from 67 could get so screwed up with embellishments. It looks more like a sex toy gone horribly awry, and that round ‘wall’ around the Earth is just a distraction.

I was disappointed we didn’t learn why the badge has that “split” down the right side of it. Given the construction, it appeared to have some functional purpose, but in seeing the Georgiou badge flipped over, it appears to be a solid piece of metal, with no other functionality.

If I had to guess, it was a style decision.
Since Discovery is filmed in 4K, it probably looked good on film, as well.
If CBS All Access monitors this board?
I’m happy to pay my subscription fee but could we please get DSC in 4K?

FYI: From what we’ve seen in behind-the-scenes stuff Discovery is shot on ARRI ALEXA cameras which are between 2.8K and 3.4K depending on how they decide to shoot. What little evidence we have seems to point to it being post-produced (final editing and VFX) for 1080p. Netflix users get a better experience (better compression than All Access and proper 5.1 sound) and report that they have HDR as an option. Better/lower compression, getting the original 5.1 mix (All Access collapses it back to stereo), and having HDR is quite a bit more important than playing a numbers game about pixels. The expanded ability of HDR to better describe extremes of darkness and light should really help the darker space scenes in Discovery. The eye is far more attracted to contrast, than simply going by pixel count. Good detail in shadows, a deep black level, etc. can increase what we often call “resolution.”

All Access is currently a pretty mediocre service, trying to shove more pixels through it won’t help. They haven’t bothered to support basic things like surround sound, and their encodes look considerably worse than other services. Their stuff looks rather bitrate starved. As a counter point, Netflix has spent nearly a decade fine tuning their optimizations for encoding for streaming, has supported 5.1 audio streaming for years, UltraHD resolution content for about 4 years, and has supported HDR for over a year now.

Bell Media (Space, CraveTV) and Netflix should get high quality studio masters direct from CBS that they then prepare as needed for their uses. So yes people watching Space are almost certainly having a better experience too.

Bell media will either have it captured by satellite feed or direct to their servers. Considering SPACE airs it a half hour before CBSAA, it is definitely not running off the encoded CBS satellite feed.

@Matt Wright — Ugh! I hate hearing that HDR is available, and CBSAA isn’t offering it. That’s really adding insult to injury. HDR would really shine on this series, even in 1080p, and actually make a significant difference in the look for the better. Also, do we know if DISC is in 24p? If so, CBSAA isn’t offering that either, or my Apple TV 4K app doesn’t support it.

Behind-the-scenes photos showing the director’s preview monitor, show it being shot at 24fps, which is what you’d expect for a typical dramatic show.

Actual 30fps content tends to only be live content, or soap operas – which have always had that “video” look.

I’ve not looked to see what my display says when I watch, but I could easily believe that the All Access apps are simply choosing to display everything at 1080p/60 since that’s the easy option, which is compatible with pretty much every TV.

I’ve also heard complaints from those with hearing issues that the captions can be pretty inaccurate at times and can get off sync from the video.

I kept expecting them to step it up and work on these issues for the release of Discovery, since it was supposed to their flagship series for their streaming service that they have a lot of pressure to make successful.

I wrote a piece a year or so back about a Netflix short called MERIDIAN that, in addition to being an open-ended weird mystery, was basically a bundle of problems and solutions to encoding and such, which was a call for web streaming folk to play with it and reverse-engineer it.

Netflix is definitely committed to making the streaming experience better, which is why I think an alliance or deal with CBS seems a huge step backwards, since everything I’ve read indicates they are still in the dark ages.

Then again, starting with TNG, TREK has been hamstrung by tech issues. The decision to finish TNG, DS9 & VGR at video resolution — roughly akin to (but probably rougher-looking than) projecting LAWRENCE OF ARABIA in a theater using Super-8 equipment — was declared necessary in order to make the shows viable financially, but resulted in the terrible, near-unwatchable versions of DS9 & VGER (well, VGR was probably unwatchable in any resolution) that we’ve been stuck with, and it wasn’t till the even bigger expense of recutting and remastering TNG that it achieved any sort of appropriately rich look. ENT switching from film to HD just made the show look more like a bad soap opera IMO, but that’s only based on seeing about three episodes, so maybe viewing their Mirrorverse and the finale weren’t sterling examples of Trek HD?

From what I’ve heard it’s simply a style decision, Bryan Fuller really liked to push the designs in new/different directions, for better or worse. The look of the ships in Discovery was also based his mandates. And of course, he was the driving force behind the new look of the Klingons makeup and costumes.